Something that I have wanted in Python for a long time is something like
the Java StringBuffer class - a mutable buffer, with string-like
methods, that holds characters instead of bytes.
I do a lot of stuff with parsing, and its often convenient to build up
long strings of text one character at a time. Doing this with strings in
Python is obviously not the way to go, since each time you append a
character you have to construct a new string object. Doing it with lists
is better, except that you still have to pay the overhead of the dynamic
typing information for each character.
Also, unlike a list or an array, you'd ideally want something that has
string-like methods, such as toupper() and so on. Calling str( buffer )
should create a string of the contents of the buffer, not generate a
repr() of the object which is what would happen if you call str() on a
list or array. Passing this buffer to 'print' should also just print the
characters. Similarly, you ought to be able to comparisons between the
mutable buffer and a real string; slices of the buffer should be
strings, not lists, and so on.
In other words - it ought to act pretty much like STL strings.
Also, the class ought to be optimized for single-character appending, it
should be smart enough to grow memory in the right-sized chunks; And no,
there's no particular reason why the memory needs to be contiguous,
although it could be.
Originally, I had thought that such a class might be called 'characters'
(to correspond with 'bytes' in Python 3000), but it could just as easily
be called strbuffer or something else.
-- Talin